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Tag Archives: 8 years old

Griffin is 13 years old and seems to be coming to the end of that early adolescent phase of rejecting everything those around him hold dear. Engaging him in math talk has taken more finesse in this phase of life.

Mostly it has involved giving him responsibility for things that involve making calculations. When he was little, we could talk collaboratively about how many tangerines are in a 3 pound bag and discuss whether this would be enough to last the family a week. Now I tend to put him in charge of getting enough tangerines to last us a week. He still has to do the same thinking, but he’s in charge.

This is not enough tangerines for a week at our house. (By the way, which is more?)

From time to time, though, we still put a mathematical idea up for discussion, and as he ages through adolescence, these conversations happen a bit more often. Yet he is still wary. Nevertheless, I persist.

We have been watching the Olympics, and we have wondered about which events are happening as we watch them, and which ones happened earlier (yet somehow happened “tomorrow”!)

Griffin was thinking about time zones, and about their implications for traveling as we wrapped up an evening this week, and made preparations for the next day.

Griffin (13 years old): So they’re 14 hours ahead of us?

Me: Yes.

G: You’d get a lot of jet lag, huh?

Me: Yeah. Maybe not as much as it looks like, though. Maybe it’s just 10 hours’ worth, going the other way.

So What Do We Learn?

Keep trying. Opportunities to talk about numbers, shapes, and patterns present themselves. Seize them and do not stop. Ask questions, think out loud. Don’t worry about whether any particular conversation goes anywhere. Just keep at it.

Make Math Playful is an unofficial slogan here at Talking Math with Your Kids. An important part of play is that there is not one right answer. Through Which One Doesn’t Belong, I showed a way to make geometry playful. Now with How Many? I’m working on a way of making counting playful.

The idea has grown out of the TED-Ed video I did a while back, and the more I play with it, the more I see it in the world around me. My goal is to help parents, teachers, and especially children see it too.

How Many? is a counting book that leaves possibilities open and that seeks to create conversations. Creativity is encouraged. Surprises abound.

The premise is simple. Every page asks How Many? but doesn’t specify what to count. Each image has many possibilities.

An example. How many?

Maybe you say two. Two shoes. Or one because there is one pair of shoes, or one shoebox. Maybe you count shoelaces or aglets or eyelets (2, 4, and 20, respectively). The longer you linger, the more possibilities you’ll see.

It’s important to say what you’re counting, and noticing new things to count will lead to new quantities.

Another example. How many?

A few possibilities: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 24, 36. What unit is each counting? Maybe you see fractions, too. 2/3, 4/6, 3/4, 1/12….others? What is the whole for each fraction? The number 3 shows up more than once—there are three unsliced pizzas, and there are also three types of pizza. Are there other numbers that count multiple units?

All of this leads to two specific invitations.

Let me come talk with your students.

(It turns out my schedule filled very quickly, and I’m no longer seeking new classrooms to visit right now—thanks to everyone for your support!)

If you are within an hour of the city of Saint Paul and work with children somewhere in the first through fourth grades, then invite me to come test drive some fun and challenging counting tasks with your students. I have set aside November 17 and 18 and hope to get into a variety of classrooms on those two days. Get in touch through the About/Contact page on this blog.

Join the fun on Twitter.

I’ve been using, and will continue to use and monitor, the hashtag #unitchat, for prompts and discussion of fun and ambiguous counting challenges. Post your thoughts, your own images, the observations of your own children or students, and I’ll do likewise.

How Many? A counting book will be published by Stenhouse late next year.

Some version of the following comes through my email Inbox every so often.

My daughter does not like maths. How can I ignite the passion for maths? She’s 8 and I feel she’s got to learn the importance of maths but how can I do it? A teacher told her Maths is not for everyone and she believes it. Help!

Here is a version of my standard response.

Your story strikes close to my heart.

You may well know that girls are much more likely to get these kinds of messages from teachers than boys are, and they are much more likely to internalize these messages, as their teachers are much more likely to be same-gender role models.

It is all heartbreaking.

And I’ve seen these forces first-hand this year with my 9-year-old daughter. Her teacher said to her in a parent-teacher conference, “Your mind is better with words than with numbers, isn’t it?”

This, despite extensive evidence that she is a super creative mathematical thinker. A significant fraction of that evidence is documented on my blog, Talking Math with Your Kids.

With my own children, I have taken the perspective that “loving math” or even “appreciating its importance” may not be reasonable goals. Instead, being able to see math in their lives, and becoming competent mathematicians is.

Of course I would love for my children to love math, just as I would love for them to love reading. But I can’t enforce those emotions. What I can do is infuse my children’s everyday world with shapes, patterns, and numbers just as I infuse their world with words and stories.

This blog is full of concrete examples of opportunities for this. The post about hot chocolate is probably the simplest and clearest example of how parents can make simple changes to support their kids’ developing mathematical minds.

I would also recommend spending some time reading the research posts. There’s a lot of useful and interesting research work going on in math education right now, especially as it pertains to elementary-aged children, parents, and math.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there is anything further I can do to support you and your daughter.

Tessalation is a terrific new picture book by Emily Grosvenor. The story involves a little girl whose mother needs a bit of peace and quiet, so sends her outside to play. While outside, Tessa (get it?) notices shapes fitting together without gaps everywhere she looks.

I helped sponsor Tessalation on Kickstarter this spring, and our hard copies arrived last week. Naturally Tabitha (9 years old) and I read it together right away.

Here are some of the things Tabitha, Griffin (11 years old) and I noticed and discussed while reading it, and afterwards:

The turtles are delightful.

While they are somewhat different turtles from the ones we’ve played with around the house for the last year, they have an important characteristic in common—two noses and two tails come together in both tessellations.

There are tessellating leaves that look an awful lot like some shapes I’ve made and we’ve played with a number of times. We saw kites and hexagons and triangles in the leaves just as we have in the pink quadrilaterals below.

We wondered whether this object counts as a tessellation. (It’s not from the book, but Tessa set a great example for us to notice and ask about tessellations in our world.)

All in all, Tessalation is perfectly aligned with the Talking Math with Your Kids spirit. It creates a richly structured and playful space for parents and children to notice things and to converse. The language is fun. The images are beautiful. Tabitha and I highly recommend it.

Quick notes: Tessalation will be a component of August’s Summer of Math box. It’s not too late to sign up! Also, we’ll soon have a Tessalation/Tiling Turtles combo pack available. You can order the book right now from Waldorf Books, and e-books from Amazon.

Here’s how it works. You can head over to the Talking Math with Your Kids store, pay for a subscription to The Summer of Math, and all summer long we’ll ship you awesome, fun stuff that will keep you and your 5—10 year old busy playing and talking math.

You’ll color, count, make patterns, designs and shapes. You’ll read together, draw, and challenge yourselves. You’ll notice. You’ll wonder. You’ll play. And when school starts back up in the fall, your kids will remember this as the best, mathiest summer ever.

The details

Each month June—September, we’ll ship you a box that contains a bunch of great stuff—at least one book, at least one related set of mathy things to play with, and at least one special surprise. For example, in June you’ll get one beautiful math coloring book, one terrific activity book, all the supplies you need for both of these, a set of spiraling pentagons (so you can make your own awesome designs like those in the coloring book), and a little something extra we cannot yet divulge.

Plus a newsletter where we’ll share additional ideas, questions, cool math stuff we’ve been doing, and reports you send us of the mathy fun you’ve had this summer.

We’ll ship the first week of each month. One week before we ship it out, we’ll send you an email letting you know exactly what’s coming your way (except for the surprise—that’s always a surprise!) You can let us know if you need to add, delete, or swap anything out. We can easily credit you for things you already have (but it’s not likely you’ll already have much of what we’ve got planned), or substitute something new and awesome for it.

We’ll have a Facebook page where we’ll share our mathy adventures and encourage you to share yours.

What are you waiting for? Click on through and join us for The Summer of Math!

As spring approaches, it’s time to update readers on what’s going on behind the scenes at Talking Math with Your Kids.

The blog

The pace of posting has slowed way down in recent months. Rest assured that we’re still talking math around the house, and that my dedication to helping others do the same remains strong. I have lots to write, but not much time to write it because…

Math On-A-Stick

Two years ago, I began to wonder how to expand the work of this blog beyond the parents who have the time, technology, and inclination to read blogs.

At the time, the answer was “Nowhere”. We had asked permission from their designers, Jos Leys and Kevin Lee, only to cut them for Math On-A-Stick. Soon afterwards, I got permission from Jos to make and sell these turtles. I also got permission from Kevin who adapted Jos’s design for laser cutting using his own software (which is a ton of fun, and which you can buy from him) Tesselmaniac.

The store

The Talking Math with Your Kids Store, at talkingmathwithkids.squarespace.com, opened late last fall with tiling turtles as the main offering. It is now stocked with a number of things to support parents and children in math activities and conversations—Pattern Machines, Tiling Turtles, Spiraling Pentagons, a gorgeous coloring book, and more on the way soon.

More

The big ideas continue to flow, and further collaborations are in the works. Keep an eye on this space. In the meantime, you can expect a few new posts in the coming weeks as my attention shifts from book-writing mode.

And don’t forget to follow the fun on Twitter at the #tmwyk hashtag, where people share young children’s beautiful ideas and questions on a daily basis.

I have been paying close attention to how children behave in this space we’ve built. I’ll just write about the plastic eggs today, but they stand in as an example for all of our activities.

When children come to the egg table at Math On-A-Stick, they know right away what to do. There are plastic eggs, and there are large empty egg cartons. The eggs go in the cartons. No one needs to give them instructions. (This is by design, by the way.)

A typical three- or four-year old will fill the cartons haphazardly. She won’t be concerned with the order she fills it, nor with the colors she uses, nor anything else. She’ll just put eggs into the carton one at a time in a seemingly random order.

But when that kid plays a second or third time, emptying and filling her egg carton—without being told to do so—she usually begins to see new possibilities. After five or ten minutes of playing eggs, this child is filling the carton in rows or columns. Or she’s making patterns such as pink-yellow, pink-yellow… Or she’s counting the eggs as she puts them in the carton. Or she’s orienting all of the eggs so they are pointy-side up.

The longer the child plays, the richer the mathematical activity she engages in. This is because the materials themselves have math built into them. The rows and columns of the egg crate; the colors and shape of the eggs; the fact that the eggs can separate into halves—all of these are mathematical features that kids notice and begin to play with as they spend time at the table.

We have seen four-year-olds spend an hour playing with the eggs.

I have observed that the children who receive the least instruction from parents, volunteers, or me are the most likely to persist. These are the children who will spend 20 minutes or more exploring the possibilities in the eggs.

The children who receive instructions from adults are least likely to persist. When a parent or volunteer says, “Make a pattern,” kids are likely to do one of two things:

Make a pattern, quit, and move to something else

Stop playing without making a pattern

We adults have a responsibility to let the children play. We can be there to listen to their ideas as they do. We can play in parallel by getting our own egg cartons out and filling these cartons with our own ideas.

But when we tell kids to “make a pattern” or “use the colors”, we are asking the children to fill that carton with our ideas, rather than allowing them to explore their own.

Here are some ideas children have explored in the last few days. I look forward to the next week’s worth of wonder. (Photos all shared by visitor and volunteers through Twitter and Intagram—handles are in the image titles. Many thanks to all for your generous sharing.)

I have had several conversations with relatively new parents in which the question of how/whether to talk math with babies.

I always try to help such parents see math like they see reading. You read with your baby long before she knows what your words mean. An important reason to do so is to immerse the child in language. This is how she will learn language. Reading books increases the variety and quality of language the child is exposed to.

It’s the same with math. We can surround our children with number and shape long before they understand what these things mean. It is through this exposure that they learn.

For parents of children of all ages, this principle applies. Don’t worry about whether the child can get right answers; make a conscious effort to notice number and shape in your world together. It is through this exposure that they will learn.

To this end, Tabitha and I have been playing with the scales at the grocery store. Not the ones at the checkout; the ones in the produce department.

The other day we found a rather large onion.

Here she is holding the onion safely back at home.

Me: What do you think this weighs?

Tabitha (8 years old): Four pounds.

Me: Hmmm…I say a pound and a half.

T: Half a pound!

She is easily influenced. We put it on the scale. It’s a pound and a quarter. I celebrate my victory briefly.

Then Tabitha notices the bananas are nearby. There are several individual bananas lying loose. She grabs one and begins to put it on the scale.

Me: Wait! Not yet! Let’s guess what it weighs.

T: With the onion…two pounds.

We add it in and see that now it’s very close to one and a half pounds.

Pretty soon we are weighing bananas by the bunch and guessing whether an avocado is heavier than a banana.

We are surrounding ourselves with numbers and having a grand old time.

So What Do We Learn?

Immersing your child in numbers is low stakes and opportunities are everywhere. We grocery shop every week, but have only recently started playing with the scales. As a general principle, anytime you encounter a number in the company of your children, you can talk about it.

When the children are infants, they won’t participate. That’s OK. They’ll learn that numbers are things to talk about.

When the children are older, they’ll make wildly inaccurate guesses. That’s OK. They’re getting practice talking about numbers.

When the children are even older, they’ll start to turn their wildly inaccurate guesses into serious learning.

Along the way, they’ll initiate the conversations themselves because you will have taught them that numbers are things people talk about.

Rafranz and Braeden (8 years old) are spending some quality weekend time together when he asks a question.

Braeden: Does the Earth have an end?

Rafranz: Braeden what do you mean by “does the earth have an end”?

B: I’ve been meaning to ask you this question for a long time, at least 2 months. I’ve always wanted to know if the earth stops when you get around it.

Rafranz is a master at the art of mathematical conversation. She asks Braeden a question that gets him talking and thinking.

R: What shape do you think that the earth is?

B: I think that it’s a circle.

R: Really, why a circle?

B: A circle is round.

R: Hmm, interesting. So what shape is that basketball? (The nearby ball may have sparked Braeden’s thoughts)

B: It’s a circle.

R: What about a pizza?

B: It’s a triangle.

This is great! Miscommunication. Rafranz is asking about the whole pizza. Braeden is thinking about a slice of a pizza.

R: I mean a whole pizza. What shape is a whole pizza?

B: It’s a circle

R: Why do you think that a pizza is a circle?

B: It’s round and has a center.

R: Earlier you told me that a basketball is a circle and a pizza is a circle. Are they the same?

Again—great move here. Braeden has identified the basketball and the pizza as being round, and therefore circular. Rafranz asks him to compare these two things and to look for differences. She is using Braeden’s curiosity to pursue some deep and important mathematical questions.

B: No, the pizza is flat. The basketball is round…like Earth. The pizza does start and stop when you get all the way around but the basketball can keep going around and around and around.

R: What do you mean around and around and around?

B: If you had a really long string, you can go around the pizza one time but a basketball, you can keep wrapping the string forever. I know why. The basketball is a sphere. (I had no idea that he knew this word)

R: What about Earth?

B: I think that earth is a sphere too and I don’t think that you can go to every single place on earth. I bet that you can keep going around and around and around.

So what do we learn?

Rafranz asks three simple questions at exactly the right moments in this conversation.

What do you think?

Why?

Are they the same?

It turns out that Rafranz really didn’t know enough about Braeden’s original question to answer it the first time around. Those were sincere questions she asked, and they produced a genuine conversation.

Ultimately, Braeden knew that if you walk around the outside of a circle, your path comes to an end—you end up back where you started, having visited all locations on the circle. But if you do this on a sphere, it seemed to him that your path does not necessarily end up back where you started. It’s a lovely insight about the relationship between two-dimensional objects and three-dimensional ones!

Starting the conversation

If you are new to talking math with your kids, don’t worry about getting the timing right. Just start to make a habit of asking those questions. The first few times, you may not get much. That’s OK. It can be like introducing new foods—children need multiple exposures to new things before they accept them. The other question to add to this collection is How do you know?

Jennifer is in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies when her son Ian (8 years old) wanders in and observes her methods. She has put three balls of cookie dough in a row, two balls of dough in the next row, and is beginning a new row.

Ian (8 years old): Are you going to put three in the next row?

Mom: Yep.

Ian: And then two in the last row?

Mom: Yep…How many cookies are on the tray?

Simulated cookie dough. Shout out to anyone who can ID the actual substance in this photo.

Ian: Ten.

Mom: How do you know that?

Ian: Three plus three is six, and two plus two is four, and six plus four is ten.

Mom: Hmm….my brain immediately puts the three and two together to make 5 and then adds the 5s together.

Mom: The recipe days it makes 5 dozen cookies. How many is that?

Ian: So that’s 5 12′s?

Mom: Yes.

Ian: 36? No…24 plus… No, wait. 60.

Mom: Ok, I made a double batch, so how many is that?

Ian: 120

Mom: And if there’s 10 on a tray, how many trays of cookies will that be?

Ian: 12

Mom: I have three cookie sheets, so how many times will I have to put each tray in the oven?

Ian: 12 divided by 3 is 4 – four times.

So what do we learn?

What I love about this conversation is that every question is an authentic one that someone baking cookies might consider along the way. I love that Jennifer keeps asking questions until she hits one that forces Ian to think, and I love that she offers Ian a different way to view the cookies on the tray (2 fives instead of 6+4). This last bit sends an important message—that math ideas are something we talk about, not just memorized facts.

Most of the time when people think about the math involved in baking, it’s the fractions. Fractions of a cup and of a teaspoon are fine. But we don’t actually do much math with them. If I need , I usually measure 3 cups and then use the cup measure. It’s counting the whole way. This is good, and it’s useful for helping children become accustomed to the relative sizes of fractions, and to the language surrounding them. But there isn’t as much mathematical thinking going on as when Jennifer asks Ian how many cookies are in 5 dozen, or to say how he knows how many cookies are on a tray with a 3-2-3-2 pattern.

Starting the conversation

Baking together is a great opportunity for asking howmany? questions of various forms. Ask your child to put things in rows, or to count things that already are. Guess how many chocolate chips are in each cookie, and then in the whole batch. Compare to the expected number of raisins in an oatmeal cookie.

All along the way, listen to your child’s thinking and offer your own ideas. Make it a conversation.